Final Instructions

by Tracy Hensley Bumpus

I warn you - this post might be considered irreverent by some people, especially if you are unfamiliar with me and my family; however, it's something that I think is rather funny in a weird kind of way.

First of all, I have to back up a few years to about 1999 (I think). We were living in Texas and my grandmother passed away. My mother was an only child and she and my grandmother did NOT get along. My grandmother had been taken care of by my brother and I for several years, but my brother took over when we moved to Austin. My mother did not have much involvement with Mommo (what we called my grandma) but when Mommo died, it was up to Mom to take care of the final arrangements because she was the next of kin. 

My grandmother had always loved a good funeral. We called her a professional mourner. She'd often go to funerals of people she had never met but were friends of friends. She just loved the socializing the occasion offered. When my grandfather died, she made sure that the traditions were followed and she was in high cotton because at the funeral, she was the center of attention. She made the most of it, too. She could be a bit of a drama queen and a good Southern funeral was just the stage she needed. 

Needless to say, my mother had little patience with all that. She considered it a waste of time and good money (Mom was cheap). Therefore, when my grandmother died, my mother didn't do the whole funeral thing but rather just had Mommo cremated (because it was cheaper), gave away her few possessions, and was done with it. When the remains (funeral professionals call them cremains) were returned to Mom, she simply put the box in the trunk of her car. And that is where it stayed until last month. That's nine years, people. For NINE YEARS, my mother rode around with my grandmother in the trunk of her car. 

Mom's original intention was to take the ashes to Alexander City, Alabama and have them buried next to my grandad, but somehow she just never got around to making the trip. So Mommo rode around in the trunk of Mom's car for years. She even got transferred from one trunk to another when Mom bought a NEW car. It got to be a bit of a family joke, really. I always told Mom that if she was ever in an accident she would have a hard time explaining when the police asked her what was in the box - "Uh, well, officer, that would be my mother."

In a way, it was rather appropriate (remember, I said you have to know my family) because my grandmother was a big traveler. She was always on the go and moved a LOT. Once she even moved from one side of a duplex to the other side - just because. We kind of figured she was having a good time sitting there next to the spare time. I told Mom "what goes around, comes around" and that I had every intention of riding her around in the trunk when she died. Mom thought that was pretty funny. 

Well, on January 5th of this year, Mom passed away. Her written directions were to be cremated. So now I was stuck with both Mommo in a box and Mom in a box. When we went to pick up Mom's "cremains" hubby carried the box out to the car for me. As we were nearing the Honda, he said, "Do you want me to put her in the backseat?" and I said, "Nope. She goes in the trunk. I always told her I was going to ride her around like she did Mommo and I'm keeping my promise." And by golly I did - at least for a few hours. I brought her in the house at the end of the day and sat her box on top of Mommo's box on the floor under my desk with strict instructions to the two of them, "No fighting, you two. I've had enough of your antics already."

A week after Mom died, we held a memorial service. Cremation is a relatively new thing for Southerners. We are accustomed to the traditional funeral process. You know - the visitation, the open casket, the service at the funeral home, the graveside service, and then the big dinner spread afterwards. People flood the family with casseroles and cakes. Everyone talks about how "good" the dead person looks, discusses the choice of flower pall and casket, etc. It's a good gossip fest and something of a family reunion. 

All Southern women can put on a funeral with little to no problem because we know the routine. Southern funerals are big occasions to see long-lost family, catch up with friends, eat big, and generally give the deceased a good send-off. When you have someone cremated, you can't really do that. What do you do? Put the box on the table at the front of the church? Remark how "good" it looks? The whole process is odd. I mean, really, I wrote a check for cremation services and they handed me my mother in a box with a UPS label on it. How weird is that?

I wasn't about to hang on to both Mom and Mommo for another nine years with both of them sitting under my dusk. In my normal fashion, I was going to take care of disposal of "cremains" as soon as possible and move on. (How can people put their family members in an urn on the mantel? I just don't get it.) The day after the memorial service, my brother, my nephew, my son and I took both boxes and rode up into the Smoky Mountains where I knew of a good mountain stream that was easily accessible to the road. It didn't matter that what I was about to do was illegal in a national park. No one but Smoky Bear would know. I figured this was as good a place as any to "bury" them both. Mommo could travel all the way to the Gulf of Mexico eventually and Mom had always enjoyed camping in the mountains in her younger days. 

It was a very cold January day - clear, with temperatures in the teens. When we got to the spot, I was elected to do the honors. We decided we would start with Mommo first since she had been deal the longest. (We're making this up as we go along because there isn't a template for this in the Southern Ladies Handbook.) When I went to open the cardboard box she was in, I discovered to my dismay that Mom had taped her in. And I mean she had done a REALLY good job - she was being absolutely positive that Mommo wasn't getting out. My goodness, she could have passed FedEx standards! I had to get my son's pocket knife to cut through the packing tape and once inside, I discovered she'd done the same to the plastic box on the inside. It took me fifteen minutes of hacking with a Swiss army knife to get in to the "cremains" with my son and nephew hopping from foot to foot and saying, "Hurry up! It's freezing!"

Okay, morbid curiosity abound and I know you are wondering what it looked like. We did too. Basically, it looked like what you would expect it to look like - gray powder. I held the plastic bag out over the river and dumped it in. Happy trails Mommo! My son and nephew threw flowers in after. And the cloudy water just sat there. Without thinking about it, we had selected a spot where the current wasn't very strong so when dumped in, it just sat there suspended in the cold mountain water. Ahh, crap. 

Learning as we went along on this, we decided it would be best to dump Mom a little further upstream and out a little farther in the current. That meant me, the elected one, had to walk out on these slippery rocks over the sub-freezing water coming down from Mt. LeConte. I was saying a prayer - "Lord, please don't let me fall in" and then "Please don't let me fall in after I dump Mom because that would be just too "icky". Forget anything appropriate like the Lord's Prayer or the 23rd Psalm. I was concerned about myself at this point. 

When opened (to our amazement), Mom didn't look like Mommo. Mom looked more like black volcanic sand. I commented, "You don't think they gave us the wrong person do you?" but then I decided it was irrelevant at this point. I'm balancing my big ol' butt on a tiny, slippery rock over rushing freezing water and I was anxious to get this done and back to shore safely. We were going to dump SOMEONE even if it wasn't Mom.

So I go through the same process and my son and nephew throw in flowers. I make it safely back to the bank and we stand there watching the stream. Now, this entire thing has been surreal from the start but here's where it get really weird. As "Mom" and "Mommo" start mixing together in the stream, whirlpools start to form and the floating flowers actually start floating UPSTREAM. The three of us look at each other with eyes like saucers and we all exclaim at once "They're fighting again!"

Rapidly, we backed up the bank of the stream and watched as the water seemed to boil and churn and the flowers were going every which way but downstream. We were afraid we'd created an EPA supersite or some sort of space/time wormhole by letting those two mix together. 

It took 20 minutes, while our noses turned blue and our breath froze in the air until finally, finally, the flowers moved on downstream and the waters smoothed out. Not a word was spoken. My son bent down and with a stick wrote in the mud beside the stream, "NO SWIMMING". I got the car keys out. "Anyone for Sonic? I could use some ice cream."

By the way, in case anyone needs to know, I've left written instructions for my burial. I want to be buried in an antique nightgown that I found at a yard sale, in a casket, and I want chicken and dumplings served for dinner. And banana pudding. Just want to make that clear. 

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